Tips from the Trenches: A Guide to Practical Parenting

Life changing advice, really. Where's his blog?

This one is short and sweet, but VERY important to your family's ability to afford food....

Make sure that your children understand that OnDemand movies COST MONEY before they are old enough to find OnDemand on their own.

Emma is a bad sleeper. Waking up multiple times a night is more common than sleeping through. She's been in a wake-up phase recently and usually once I'm "on to her" I can get some reprieve by telling her at bedtime I am nearby, but will not come unless it is important. I make her repeat that she will not call me if she wakes up. Usually, this makes a small amount of difference.

So last night, as I was kissing her good night, I reminded her that I wouldn't be coming in. She agreed and said "only if I'm sick." "That's right. I'll come if you got sick and needed me to give you medicine or something." "OK, Mommy. Night night."

Then, at 1:32 AM, I'm pulled from a rare deep sleep by Emma yelling "Mommy, I think I'm going to be sick!"

I leap out of bed before I'm even awake and rush to her room to find her all cozy in bed waiting for me.

She repeated herself and said, "Mommy, I think a drink would make me feel better."

In a daze, I handed her the cup that was FULL BESIDE HER BED, told her that she was naughty, and went back to bed where I tossed and turned for the next 2 hours until I finally passed out.

Looking back on it now, I should have spiked her drink.

After several unreasonable early morning requests in lieu of sleep in my cozy bed, I lost my temper with Emma this morning and told her, "Don't drive me! I'm not a bus!"

I was worried that she wouldn't get the point. It was a somewhat abstract reference. My worry didn't last long because it was until about 10 minutes later when...

EMMA: Mommy, please can I be the boss?
ME: Of course, you can pretend to be the boss. You can play whatever you want.
EMMA: No! I want to be the real boss!

....an Air Freshener War.

Bet you are wondering what that is, aren't you?

Well, for your future reference, an Air Freshener War is when you are on the phone trying to work out a complicated technical problem with your hosting server (a problem which requires the technical support rep to use phrases, such as "we call this a hail mary attempt" and "when was the last time you did a database backup?") and your attention-deprived children who have  become bored waiting for your undivided attention discover two room air fresheners. The war part is pretty self-explanatory.

The result is also self-explanatory.

The nausea is unexpected.

Well, Hell just froze over and I'm officially an adult. All in one day! Middle-age-ish came to slap me hard in the face today when Jack's friend, I'll call him Waldo, came over to play after school.

When I sat down on the couch to take a breath and sit in peaceful cartoon bliss for a moment while the kids sucked on their Incredible Hulk Popsicles and chomped on their Swedish Fish (courtesy of Costco!), my big fat butt hit the "off" button on the remote and the TV was torn asunder. The complaining took mere seconds to errupt.

In the stress of the moment, I couldn't get the remote on the right setting to turn it back on. (We have one of these. Surely, it should be obvious why immediate gratification was a little delayed since I do not possess a PhD in remote science.) After taming my dismay with a few unhappy grunts, Waldo pipes up....

"It's ok. A lot of ladies have that problem when they get old."

The best part was that, when what he said finally sunk in, I told him I was going to tell his mother what he said. At which point, he said "No, don't! My mom will kill me!"

Well, you know what they say....payback's a bitch.